Blur - Pyongyang

Damon Albarn is probably one of the best composers of my lifetime. It's difficult for me to come to something titled Pyongyang without heading into precarious emotional ground. Don't ask me why, but North Korea has been one of my causes for about three years now. I was on a bus in Western China looking out to see people living in caves and schoolkids dressed in uniforms. As a Asian Studies/Chinese major, a significant part of my studies were devoted to understanding Maoism, and what led up to it. So naturally North Korea presented a kind of case study for me, to see what China may have been like in the 70s/80s.

Diving into everything I could about North Korea brought me to a waking nightmare. For the first time in my life, I stayed up all night because I was so disturbed with what I found. While we go about our lives, there are people in gulags for no reason whatsoever. I can't describe the atrocities, but they're there. We know they're there. There are very few topics that I have willingly abandoned learning more about. North Korea is a kind of hybrid. If there's news, I read it, but I can't learn more. It hurts and disturbs too much to where I literally lose sleep over it. And to be honest, it's not that I'm up fretting over diplomacy issues. I just can't stop thinking about the torture and fear and creepy skycrapers, the cannibalism, and the Mass Games. I close my eyes and throw money at Liberty in North Korea. Which is an awesome organization based in LA, btw.

So, I'm not 100% sure what the lyrics are about here (yikes Paige), but it looks to me like someone's about to be put to death in Pyongyang?  I am sure there are others out there, but I like that Albarn, who produced this in China, is talking about things that matter.  Sometimes I feel artists in the West don't create art as interesting as those who are more oppressed, who need art to express themselves. That sounds like a very college-y thing for me to say, but it makes sense. How punk are you really when you have no enemies?